Skrivanek Blog

The need for cross-border litigation increases annually as global trade does, and the discovery process of a foreign entity inevitably requires translation that is not simple or cheap. Thousands of pages of documents of all kinds in multiple languages might need to be reviewed to extract the information you need. According to an article in Multilingual (June 2017), the cost of the discovery process in litigation is “growing out of proportion to the benefits gained.”

In fact, language barriers are a main obstacle preventing people, companies and organizations from acting to defend their rights internationally. In order to proceed when legal action is necessary and the costs of time and money are overwhelming, it’s tempting to ask a bilingual associate or employee, or even the client involved, to translate the relevant texts. But authorities in the countries involved will often refuse to even accept a document that is not translated well.

There are some tips to keep in mind that can make an overseas discovery and legal case more manageable:

1. Use Machine Translation software strategically as a first step. Making a list of key words and concepts to search for and translate enables you to scour foreign language documents for passages of text that target the matter at hand. Putting those documents or passages into the hands of professional language service providers for precise translations is the next step.
2. Right from the start, be very clear on which documents require summary translations, and which require certified translations (by human professionals). Subject matter experts are invaluable.
3. Ensure that all involved parties understand “hold” policies for data so that nothing is compromised or lost. This means that the translations for your hold policies must be extremely clear and succinct.
4. Be aware of which types of documents in which countries are actually “discoverable.” In the United States, for instance, privacy policies are much looser; it can be a surprise to find that in Germany or elsewhere you do not have a legal right to as much information.
5. Moving forward, participation in global compliance programs and translation of all of your company’s basic texts into multiple languages, are two ways to show good intentions of transparency and inclusion, and to develop long-term policies that support any future legal needs.

Beyond the page, depositions may be required for the court presentation of your legal matter. Recorded legal statements intended for use as evidence will require skilled interpreters. Skrivanek has a history of over two decades of navigating the legal language translation and interpreting needs of international customers. We are ready to help you defend your rights anywhere in the world.

It’s an ancient human dream: the creation of a universal language that every person can speak and understand, regardless of their native tongue or country of origin. Universal languages, such as Esperanto, have attempted to fulfill that dream, and on a smaller scale, individual languages have united multiple dialects within their language into an “official” language that serves the common good.

For several centuries attempts have been made to create a common language for Slavic speakers. In 1864, the author of one such “Pan-Slavic language project”* questioned why other European tongues – Greek, French, Italian, German, English – contain multiple dialects and yet manage to share a unified literary language, while Slavic dialects are incomprehensible to one another, with no shared mode of communication.

Now another inter-Slavic language has been developed and was presented June 1 of this year. Total Croatia News reports that Czech linguist Vojtech Merunka and Croatian anthropologist Emil Hersak have collaborated in order to help simplify communication between Slavic speakers of different origins, and to improve the quality of machine translation.

Because English is currently the only intermediary language in Google’s online translation system, for instance, puzzling word offerings can arise when translating from one Slavic language to another. Here’s an example: with English as the connecting Google tool, the Croatian word “medvjed” (the noun, “bear”) ends up as “endure” in Polish and “carry” in Russian, because these are both English verbs that are synonyms with the English verb “to bear.”

Linguist Merunka says that the new Slavic grammar he and Hersak have designed is based entirely on the structure of Slavic languages and is simple enough that a speaker of one Slavic language could master it in a month, while a speaker of two Slavic languages would understand it right away. The vocabulary is also derived from Slavic roots, without artificial elements.

While historical efforts to unify Slavs through a Pan-Slavic language have sometimes been driven by cultural and political convictions that the Slavic people are all part of a single Slavic nation and their language should reflect that, Vojtech Merunka’s aspirations are not politically driven. It’s a practical matter of facilitating and streamlining connection among people whose languages have so much in common anyway, especially as globalization relentlessly forges ahead.

Skrivanek specializes in Slavic language translation and localization, and you may rest assured that we are up-to-date on the presence of any and all new languages in the region.

*Matija Majar-Ziljski (1809-1892), Wikipedia